Keynote Lectures

When we look at the cultural Western history and accept philosophical assumption that masculinity and femininity, fatherhood and motherhood have been constructed by means of certain ideas, theories, material resources and practices, we can problematize the contemporary forms of parenthood and feminism approach to fatherhood as such. Feminism as an influential theoretical shift in Western thinking and powerful political movement, directly and indirectly has changed our understanding of masculinity therefore it has also transformed modes of fatherhood which our time is able to offer. I want to reflect upon difficult relationship between (some versions of) feminism and (lack of) focus on fatherhood in feminist theories. I will show a bit of conceptual history of the phenomena under discussion and its broad philosophical understanding. I also point out its complicated meanings and entanglement with the concept of masculinity of certain time, the form of family, class differences, the shape of the private/public domain, processes of industrialization and professionalization of Western culture. I hope that using conceptual philosophical tools will help us to understand which form of fatherhood we would like to promote after feminist intervention.

State social policies often welcome and praise, sometimes even stimulate, fathers´ involvement in caring and nurturing status in the family. So do most women. The paper elaborates several sociological qualitative empirical studies exploring nurturing fathers´ practices in families with small children in the Czech Republic, namely men on parental leave, fathers at childbirth and couples with firstborn babies. The research findings offer some critical considerations of their practices for gender equality in the family pointing out the double-sidedness or multi-layered context in which fathers get involved in nurturing and care. Issues such as men´s anxiety or dominance act together to challenge the status quo in gender relations as well as reproduce it. Thus, focus on fathers in this paper opens up questions of enhancing gender equality and anxiety towards dismantling masculine hegemony.

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Svend Aage Madsen, “Contemporary Fatherhood Between Attachment and Autonomy – Fatherhood and Childbirth Through History and Dilemmas in Modern Men’s Parenthood”

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In public life as well as in science the interest in fatherhood has been growing in the past decades. Issues such as custody, paternal leave, gender equality in child care, importance of early contact between fathers and their infants, the consequences of father absence etc. have been studied and discussed. Many questions still remain unanswered. The emergence of these questions is linked to the remarkable changes in fathers’ behavior towards infants and family life in the last decades.

While it has been unusual earlier in human civilization for fathers to attend the births of their children and be in contact with their infants, we now see that fathers attend deliveries and have much more contact with, and responsibility for, their small children. The Danish Fatherhood Research Program has shown that fathers now are present at 95% of the deliveries, and that most of the fathers also participate in pre-natal courses and preparatory childbirth consultations. And moreover that the fathers consider that having a child is a family experience they want to be part of. At least in the Nordic countries, it has been common for fathers to take parental leave; with Islandic men taking the lead with an average of 12 weeks parental leave.

These remarkable changes in men’s lives and in the images of masculinity have also opened our eyes for the fact that men, too, can experience great psychological challenges and difficulties in connection with becoming a father.

Results from The Danish Fatherhood Research Program show that between 7 and 10 % of all men becoming fathers develop postnatal depression. And furthermore that the fathers often show these states of mind when having such mental difficulties:

Withdrawal from their close relationships

Anger toward themselves and their close relationships

Seeking autonomy

These states are often intertwined with reflections on how to be a nurturer and masculine at the same time, and not the least how to cope with the conflicts between work and family lives.

The lecture will present and discuss these results.

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Our Keynote Speakers

Aleksandra Derra

Philosopher, philologist, translator

Supervisor of Postgraduate Studies in Gender and associate professor at the University of Nicolaus Copernicus in Toruń. She also works as a research visiting fellow at the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies at Trinity College in Dublin.

Iva Šmídová, Ph.D. has worked in the field of gender studies since the early 1990s with a particular focus on Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities (CSMM). Her Ph.D. thesis thematised Different Men in the Czech Republic (Alternative Lifestyles connected to Environmental Protection). Her research studies include Families Where Fathers Nurture, and Parents Before and After Childbirth. Her recent research into Czech reproductive medicine has reflected on Men Condemned to Rule analysing men in professional positions of power (medical doctors in head positions of hospital hierarchy in obstetrics) experiencing their everyday life as not a personally satisfying one.

Selected Publications:

Šmídová Iva (2011). Do the Right Thing! Do Fathers at Childbirth Bring Diversity to Gender Relations? In Rašticová, M. et al. (eds.)Diversity is Reality: Effective Leadership of Diverse Teams in a Global Environment. Brno: CERM – English Books. Pp. 164-173.

Dr. Svend Aage Madsen is a specialist in clinical psychology. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1995 at the University of Copenhagen on ‘When Being a Mother is not Just Happiness”.

Since 1996 he has been Head of Department for Psychology, Play Therapy & Social Counselling at the Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet Denmark.

Svend Aage Madsen has headed research programmes tackling issues such as ‘Fathers’ Relations with their Infants’, ‘Fathers and Delivery’, ‘Men’s Mood Disorders in Becoming Fathers’, and ‘Men as Patients’. He is working clinically and scientific with a focus on men’s and fathers’ mental health and men and psychotherapy. Currently Svend Aage Madsen is conducting a comprehensive research program on how to detect coming fathers mood disturbances during the coming mothers pregnancy. Svend Aage Madsen has published several national and international books and articles. He is author of the section “Men’s mental health” in the report “The State of Men’s Health in Europe”. He was Chair of Copenhagen Conference 2012 on “Gender and Health through Life”, and is President of Men’s Health Society, Denmark, and Vice President of European Men’s Health Forum.

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Will the conference look for Input from the American perspective? I am attempting to write a book on Men and Boys issues here in the United States, the problems that modern feminism has presented for males in education, family structure, fatherhood, etc. my research covers a wide array of issues. I am not sure if these would be relevant to this conference, however, I believe that feminist ideology has an effect that has transcended to male-hood and fatherhood. The males own view of themselves in modern american society is not illistrated clearly and (in my opinion) has caused many social, cultural, and economic issues for these men! My dissertation was titled “Non-Custodial strain and Criminality” and looked at the issues many American fathers face within American society in regards to their children and the new social norms! please contact me or Google my work and let me know if this is of interest to you and how I may contribute to your conference.